Barrymore: E.T. sequel won’t happen

The 43-year-old actress, who played Gertie in the film, explained on Wednesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live that director Steven Spielberg made the film “just as it should be.”

“I will say in the early 80s, there was not always a lot of talk of sequels,” Barrymore said of the present-day craze for sequels and revivals. “[Spielberg] never wanted to make them because he felt like what he did was just as it should be.”

“I remember being seven and staying at his house for the weekend — he was a ‘godfather’ to me,” she added. “He said, ‘No, we’re never going to make a sequel. It’s just as it is.’ That was his philosophy, so who was I to ever question it?”

Barrymore later said on the after-show that she’d be open to collaborating again with actor Adam Sandler. The pair co-starred in the movies The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates and Blended.

“Adam and I text all the time about our next thing, and we’re like, ‘We’re so fat. We’re so old. What the [expletive]?'” Barrymore said.

“Like, literally, the last thing I suggested to him was like, ‘On Golden Pond?,'” she added.

Barrymore presently stars on the Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet, which returned for a second season this month. She previously told The Toronto Sun that Spielberg “does not ever want to make” a sequel to E.T.

United Press International is an international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the 20th century.